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Certainly goats have been part of human history, providing meat, milk, fibre and skins to primitive tribes.
They were the mainstay of nomadic existence, largely because they could travel well and could live on a wide range of available vegetation.
Goats retain these traits, and they are part of the story of their new-found potential in modern farming.
The Bible contains numerous references to goats (Exodus 26 v 7 refers to the goathair curtains in tabernacles).
And the well-known Italian goat fibre authority, G P Nesti, has remarked on the fact that “at the time of Babur, the first great Mogul ruler (late 15th century), there were in Shrinagar more than 10,000 artisans who worked at the production of cashmere artifacts that were greatly appreciated by the privileged classes of Asia .
At the end of the 17th century the first Kashmir shawls were brought to Europe by English and Portugese merchants, and two centuries later Eugenie, wife of Napolean III, who was the queen of fashion, launched a vogue for them, and it is recorded that prices were paid of up to 200,000 francs of the time, which I believe is in the region of $50,000 to $60,000 of today”.
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The Swiss dairy breeds appeared in Britain at the end of the 19th century, and the British Toggenberg and other UK types were developed from these.
Goats filled an important role in pagan ceremonies, the horns of the goat becoming a symbol of male power and might, with several of the pagan gods — Pan being the best known — always pictured as being horned like a buck.
When Christianity sought to destroy pagan gods and practices, the goat was cast into outer darkness with the Devil, who was himself often portrayed as having the horns of a goat.
Instead, under Christianity, the sheep became the symbol of the new religious order; Christ was the Good Shepherd and it was His flock, the Sheep, that were destined to inherit the Earth.
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